RENCONTRES BANDITS-MAGES FROM 11/12 TO 12/02/2018 – BOURGES

How to get a hold of it when everything is surface within social networks flow, as foam of a wave replacing another that had barely taken shape.

Internet had been dreamed as a global village agora, where to share knowledges and as the artificial consciousness of a finally reunited humankind. It now also turns out as (self) propaganda displaying an egotistical vision of one’s self and of the world.

How to get a hold of it when sciences complexity grows bigger along with bio-technologies opening up to troubling possibles, breeding ground of all dystopian and utopian fantasies.

Between fake news and the reemergence of situated knowledges and of empirical and vernacular knowledges, the occidental science crisis also -and mostly- outlines a yearning for re-appropriation and plural knowledges sharing.

How to get a hold of it when certitudes and categories are collapsing, when I literally is an Other, coexisting in the same body with bacteria, when identities are flowing and when genres are multiple.

By the time we rediscover systemic inter-dependance of the Living and of the Earth system, when we no longer have neighbours,in terms of both territories and living beings, from algae and micro-organisms, to plants, and animals, and to our “frères humains” living in the same time space we do, but also to those before us, and those yet to be coming, how to reinhabitthis world and in our selves?

This 2018 Bandits-Mages meetings edition is based on a selection of pieces created during EMAP* network artistic residences.

Exploring Reality either in a substantial, fictive, idealised, unconscious, fantasist or speculative way, all these works, despite their very different aesthetics and purposes, are coming together in terms of care, in the sense of “taking care of”. All these works delve beneath the surface, within bodies and minds, within logos and iconos, bringing together collectiveness and individuality to mend the fabric of the world

ArchaeaBot, by Anna Dumitriu & Alex May is exploring a speculative approach, proposinga new hybrid living form -combiningarchaea (oldest lifeforms on Earth) and robotics- to carry onon evolutionin an environment after the world as we know it. [installation]

The notion of identity is at the core of Faster Than Light, a queer-identified film-performance by Kentaro Kumanomido & Thomas Anthony Owen. [Projection + performance]

The Bottled Songs of Lost Childrenpresents a step of Chloé Galibert-Lainé & Kevin Lee‘s work on terrorism within social networks and media. By de-constructing these images and propaganda videos semiotics, their circulation and re-de-contextualisation, this work gives a reflexive look on human sciences academic research and on the attraction-repulsion generated by these images. [Performative conference + videos]

Universal Ear** by Graeme Cole is a film-installation displaying global collection and storage utopia through Harley Byrne’s character, hoping to record and make available “all world’s music” online. [installation + films]

The circular shape of the exhibition venue (Bourges former water tower), turns into a metaphor, picturing a fluid transition of the material to the unconscious, of individual to collectivity, of vernacular sciences to cutting-edge techno-sciences, of oneself to the Other, however its nature may be, living and non-living, human and non-human, into techno-zoosystemics***.

He had suggested, commented and illustrated the term of technozoosystemics, in his artistic and theoretical work that one will have to re-discover.
I would love to be able to invent words, as he did. I shall simply thank him.